Saint Joseph Catholic Church

John Prevost, one of Pope Leo’s two brothers, denied a report that Pope Leo planned to visit the United States in 2026.

NBC 5 Chicago reported:

There are no revealed plans for Pope Leo to visit the U.S. any time soon, but was there a time when plans fell through because of the acrimony espoused by the president? Prevost says no.

“I think one thing that has to be made clear is when some newscaster announced that the Pope canceled a trip to the United States. That’s not true,” he said. “At no time, was the Pope planning a trip the United States this year.”

The Pontiff is scheduled to deliver a livestream talk to Americans on July 3, when he receives the Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center.

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Archbishop Richard Moth, the new archbishop of Westminster, was elected by his confrères as the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.

Archbishop Moth succeeds Cardinal Vincent Nichols, his predecessor in Westminster, who has led the episcopal conference since 2009.

“For me, mission is very much a priority: a mission grounded in prayer and our celebration of the liturgy, and a mission that enables us to bring the light of the Gospel and the peace of Christ to the world in which we live,” said Archbishop Moth.

The archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, decried political polarization in Argentina at a Mass marking the first anniversary of Pope Francis’s passing.

“More than ever, Argentina needs that culture of encounter the Pope spoke about so often,” Archbishop Jorge García Cuerva preached on April 21. “Let’s see when we’re going to stop looking at each other as enemies. We’re not even able to sit in the same church pew,”

On the anniversary, President Javier Milei called the late Pontiff the “most important Argentine in history.”

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), joined by the General Council of the Assemblies of God and the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventists, filed a brief in support of Daniel Grand in the case of Grand v. City of University Heights, Ohio.

“Religious freedom is not a privilege to be rationed by administrative gatekeepers,” the USCCB noted in its brief, filed on April 10 and published yesterday on the USCCB’s website. “It is a constitutional right that federal courts are obliged to protect as soon as the government threatens to burden it.”

The brief explained:

Daniel Grand is a Jewish man who opened his home for prayer. The City of University Heights responded by ordering him to stop in cease-and-desist letter. That cease-and-desist letter was not an invitation to negotiate; it was a credible threat of enforcement against constitutionally and statutorily protected religious exercise.

Two attorneys for the law firm First and Fourteenth prepared the brief.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, one of the two pro-prefects of the Dicastery for Evangelization, delivered a lecture at the Catholic University of America on April 22 on the importance of prayer, especially liturgical prayer.

Archbishop Fisichella said that liturgical beauty is essential “in order to evoke in every believer the supreme reality of encounter with the mystery of God.”

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